I first stepped foot in Idaho during the summer of 2013, to interview for a job as a librarian and archivist at Boise State University. Originally from the East Coast, I arrived knowing little about Idaho beyond its famous potatoes. Continue reading
Photo Courtesy of Annette Barton This photo from 1938 shows the original Heavens Gate fire lookout tower in the Seven Devils Mountains above Hells Canyon. It comes from the Lenora Hibbs Barton collection held by my late
Growing up in a small town like Meridian in the 1950s was probably the best start anyone could have in life: the perfect atmosphere to create memories and friends that would last a lifetime. But that was what a small town was about. We knew everybody, every kid in school—and everybody’s parents knew ours. Continue reading
Long after I think we will crest the summit, we do, which seems to always be the case with curving backcountry roads. We reach a jagged rock edge plummeting into the southeast-facing drainage of the North Lick Creek/Secesh River that will take us to the east fork of the south fork of the Salmon River. Confused? No worries. Continue reading
November 2015 Calendar of Events around Idaho. Continue reading
Scrambled Egg and Mozarella Breakfast Pizza, and Michell Chadd’s Award-Winning Confidential Fudge Continue reading
“Atomic City isn’t exactly on the edge of the world,” Dwain Payne jokes, “but you can throw a beer can over it from here.” Seated on the corner stool of the bar he owns with Patsy, his wife of two years, he looks every inch the western barkeep. Wearing his ten-gallon straw hat, white hair peeking out the edges, a thick white mustache obscuring his grin, clad in blue western style shirt and jeans, he chats with my husband Jim and me about life in Atomic City. Continue reading
IN THIS ISSUE! Atomic City, Boise, Hells Gate Lookout, Idaho Falls, Kelso Lake, Mackay, Meridian, Montpelier, Murray, Pierce, Winchester, Yellow Pine
As a young man, I had a job cleaning up tributaries and drainages above the Salmon River that had been fouled by years of mining. Beginning in the 1860s, miners left enormous piles of lead ore tailings when the easy gold ran out. Containers of mercury lay buried along stream banks. Continue reading
In the spring of 1941, my family moved from Pocatello into the first of three houses we were to occupy over several years in Mackay.
I was four years old and had three older brothers named Johnie, Eddie, and Gene, and a younger sister Hazel, who was one-and-a- half. In each of the three houses, the arrival of four boys was soon followed by trouble. Continue reading
